Dust in space environments, especially Moon and Mars has been recognized, by several Space Agencies, including NASA and ESA, as a major concern for the successful robotic and manned exploration and colonization missions. In order to solve or at least mitigate the dust issues, new technologies should be developed to remove dust from surfaces, during space missions. Aim of the present idea is to design and develop an innovative, lightweight (as a cost benefit for access to space), high performance material with elevated strength-to-weight ratio, to mitigate particles 'deposition, without using external forces, through the modification of the surface properties of the protected surfaces, by means of both chemical and physical methodologies. In this way, it is possible to minimize the surface energy and consequently the adhesion forces, the electrostatic and the van der Waals interactions between the external layers and the granular dust micrometric particles. The proposed method is potentially applicable to a wide range of technological situations and it is not based on the application of an external coating, constituted by substances of different chemical composition compared to the underlying substrate. It rather relies on a more reproducible and controllable chemical and physical modification of the material’s surface through, first a design and synthesis of suitable polyimides and copolyimides and incorporation of special low molecular weight additives able to spontaneously migrate toward the external layers, drawn by thermodynamics forces, inserted directly within the reacting mixture during the intermediate phases of the copolymerization, and secondly by means of the post-processing of the polymerized material through the application of special designed and optimized surface engineering techniques. The proposed approach consists in four technological steps, starting from selection of suitable raw materials up to the their final innovative characterization.
